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The Ethics of Opposition Research IV: Content

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Now that the ethics of methods and sources have been addressed, I now turn to considering the ethics of the content of opposition research. The objective is to provide some general guidance about what sort of content is morally acceptable to research and use against political opponents.

Since the objective of opposition research is to find damaging or discrediting information about the target, the desired content will always be negative (or perceived as negative). While there is the view that if one has nothing nice to say about someone else, then one should say nothing, the negative nature of the content does not automatically make such research unethical. To support this, consider the obvious analogy to reporters: the fact that they are on the lookout for negative information does not make them unethical. Finding negative things and reporting on them are legitimate parts of their jobs. Likewise for opposition researchers. As such, concerns about the ethics of the content must involve considerations other than the mere negative nature of the desired content.

One obvious guide for ethical content is that the information must be true. This does raise an obvious epistemic problem: how can the researchers know that the information is true? Laying aside the classic epistemic problems of skepticism, this is a practical question about evidence, reasoning and credibility—which go way beyond the scope of this essay. However, a general ethical guide can be provided. At a minimum, the claim should only be accepted and used if it is more likely to be true than false. Both ethics and critical thinking also require that the evidence for a claim be proportional to the strength of the claim. As such, very strong claims require equally strong support. Ethics also requires considering the harm that could be done by using the claim and the greater the harm that could be done to a person, the greater the evidence needs to be. This guide is at odds with the goal of the research, since the more damaging the claim, the better. But, ethics requires balancing the political value of the weaponized information against the harm that could be done to person who might be innocent of the alleged wrongdoing. This is not to say that such damaging information should not be used, but that due caution should be used.

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This approach is analogous to guides to the use of physical force. Justifying the use of lethal force against a person requires having very strong reasons to believe that person is a threat and that the force must be used to stop them. To the degree that there are doubts about the threat, the justification for the use of force is reduced. Likewise, damaging information should be used with due caution to try to ensure that an innocent person is not unjustly harmed. For example, if someone is accused of running a gang-rape ring in high school and college, then there would need to be strong evidence supporting such a damaging claim.

There is, of course, considerable debate about when the use of force is justified, and people often take into account the perception of the person using the force (such as how scared or threatened they claimed to be). The same would apply to the use of damaging information and there will be considerable disagreement (generally along ideological lines) about whether the use of damaging information is justified or not. And there will be debates about how the people assessing the claim see the claim’s plausibility. Despite these issues, the general guide remains: the evidence needs to be adequate to justify the belief the claim is true. The use of information that does not meet even the minimal standard (more likely to be true than not) would clearly be unethical. In other cases, there can be considerable warranted debate about whether a claim is adequately supported or not. In addition to the concern about the truth of the information, there is also the concern about the relevance of the information.

The general principle of relevance is obvious enough: the content must be relevant to the issue at hand. In the abstract, relevance is easy enough to define: information is relevant if it bears on the person’s suitability for the position/office/etc.  For example, if the opposition research is against someone running for senate, then the content must be relevant to the person’s ability to do the job of a senator properly and effectively. What should be considered relevant will vary from situation to situation.

One problem is that when it comes to particulars people can have very different notions of what is relevant. For example, some might consider the high school and college behavior of a candidate for the Supreme Court to be relevant information while others might disagree. As another example, some might consider a candidate’s sexual activity relevant while others might see consensual sex of any kind between adults to not be of concern.

One way to solve this problem is to use this principle: whatever would influence voters (if true) is acceptable to use. While this seems to be entailed by the citizen’s right to know, it provides a very broad principle. In fact, it might be so broad as to be useless as a guide. After all, voters can be influenced by almost any fact about a person even when it would seem to have no relevance to the office/position/etc. in question.

That said, there is also the problem that many offices and positions have little in the way of requirements. For example, the office of President has only the age and nationality requirements. Because of this, using the requirements of the office/position/etc. to set the limits of information would be far too narrow. What is needed is a guide that is not too narrow and not too broad.

One option would be to go with the established norms for the office/position/etc. For example, while the requirements to be President are minimal, there (used to be) expectations about what the person should be like to be fit for office.

The problem with using the norms is that this seems to embrace relativism and allows for a potentially unchecked race to the bottom as norms are broken and replaced. As such, there should be some restrictions on what is ethical content that goes beyond the norms of the day. Developing a full moral guide goes beyond the scope of this essay, but a general guide can be offered. The guiding principle is that the content should be relevant to the office/position/etc. while also considering what would reasonably be relevant to the voters.

 

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The Ethics of Opposition Research III: Sources

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As with any research, opposition research relies on sources (which might be fictional). If the goal is to gather true and relevant information, then the credibility of sources is of great concern. There are, of course, the usual logical standards for assessing the credibility of sources. This assumes that the goal is to find information that is true (and relevant). In such cases, the argument from authority provides a good guide. After all, to accept a claim from a source as true because of the source is to engage in the argument from authority.  This argument has the following form:

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is an authority on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

The argument can also be recast as an argument from credibility, if one prefers that to authority.

 

Premise 1: A makes claim C about Subject S.

Premise 2: A is a credible source on subject S.

Conclusion: C is true.

 

Assessing this reasoning involves assessing the credibility of source of the claim. One of the main factors of concern is the degree that the source is biased: the more biased, the less credible. Other factors include that the source has the expertise/knowledge to make claims on the subject, whether the source is identified or not (anonymous sources cannot be properly assessed for credibility), and whether credible sources also agree that the claim is true. It must be noted that a lack of credibility does not prove that a claim is false. Rather, a lack of credibility means that there is no reason to accept the claim on the basis of that source. Because people tend to weigh bias very heavily, it is especially important to note that biased sources can still make true claims—proving bias lowers credibility but does not disprove the claim. For example, the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hates Hillary Clinton does not prove that his claims about her are false. This bias does, however, reduce his credibility since he has a reason to say untrue negative things about her. As such, using Assange as a source for opposition research against Hillary would require considering this biasing factor. Credibility, obviously, is quite relevant to the assessing the ethics of selecting sources.

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If the goal of opposition research us to get true and relevant information, then only credible sources should be used. While there is the question of how credible a source should be, a minimal standard should be that the source is more likely to be truthful than lying. And, to follow the advice of John Locke, the evidence must be proportional to the strength of the claim. So, for example, the claim that a candidate’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination would require considerable support. If the goal is simply to win by any means necessary, then the moral concerns are irrelevant. What would matter would be pragmatic concerns about the effectiveness of the information acquired from the source. If the credibility of the source matters to the public (which, as Trump has shown, is often not the case), then credible sources should be used. If the target audience does not care about credulity, then it would not matter—and opposition research could become fiction writing. One could also advance the usual sort of utilitarian argument that the end of defeating a bad opponent would justify the means—though this would also require considering the harm caused by setting aside concerns about credibility.

In addition to the credibility concerns about sources, there are also moral worries about sources—especially about which sources are ethical to use. As was the case with methods, the use of publicly accessible sources raises no special moral problems. After all, such information is already available, and the opposition research merely collects it so it can be used against the opposition. As with the ethics of methods, the law can provide a useful starting point for ethical considerations about sources. It can also be argued that the use of illegal sources would be unfair to the opposition—if they are staying within the law.  Naturally, it should be kept in mind that the law is distinct from morality, so that the legal is not always ethical and the illegal is not always unethical.

One example that helped bring opposition research into the public eye is the Russian efforts to get information to the Trump campaign in 2016. While Trump claims that they had nothing of value, it is illegal for a candidate to receive anything of value from a foreign source.  In addition to the illegality of accepting foreign assistance in a political campaign, there is also the moral argument that outsiders should not be allowed to interfere in our elections—even if they have true and relevant information. After all, the election is the business of the citizens and foreign involvement subverts democracy. As another example, someone who violates a non-disclosure agreement to provide information would also be an illegal source. From a moral standpoint, the person who signed the NDA would be breaking their agreement and thus acting unethically. Naturally, if the NDA was imposed unjustly or otherwise morally problematic, then breaking it could be morally acceptable. However, as a general rule, using sources that have made an agreement not provide information would seem to be wrong. But, there is the obvious problem that NDAs are sometimes used to hide rather bad things that would be quite relevant to political decision making.

As was the case with methods, one could advance the argument that winning is all that matters or a utilitarian argument could be used to justify using morally dubious sources. For example, a utilitarian argument could be made for getting a source to break an NDA that forbids them from talking about the settlement they got from being sexually harassed by a Democratic senator. After all, this information would be relevant to deciding whether to vote for the senator.

More broadly, it could be argued that the source should not matter—if the information is true and relevant. After all, the right of citizens to know true and relevant information could be taken to override ethical concerns about sources. This is something that likely requires assessment on a case-by-case basis. To illustrate, consider the question of whether political campaigns should accept true and relevant information from foreign powers. On the one hand, there is the argument that the information could help prevent harm by reducing the chance that a bad person would be elected or appointed. However, accepting such aid from foreign powers is to invite the subversion of the election process and would presumably create more harm in the long run than whatever harm specific information might prevent in particular cases. As such, foreign sources of this type would be unethical to use. In the next and final essay, I will consider the ethics of the content of opposition research, which focuses on the matter of relevance.

 

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The Ethics of Opposition Research II: Methods

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One key factor in the ethics of opposition research is the ethics of the methods. The idea is straightforward: ethical methods are obviously acceptable, while unethical methods are obviously problematic. The challenge is developing consistent principles that can be used to sort out the ethical from the unethical.  Since there are far too many possible methods of opposition research to address one by one, I will focus on commonly used general methods and leave the small details to others (or future essays).

A general method that is obviously ethical is gathering information through publicly accessible methods. One obvious example is accessing publicly available voting records. Other examples include gathering other information accessed through publicly accessible methods, such as requests for public documents, searching through public sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  As a final example, interviewing people who agree to be interviewed would, in general, be an ethical method. As probably has been noticed, there is considerable overlap between methods and sources, but there are important distinctions that require considering them separately. Methods are, after all, how one gets the information. Sources are where it comes from. While methods are used on sources, there can be a difference in their ethics. An ethical method might be used to get information from a morally problematic source or an unethical method might be used to gather information from a morally unproblematic source of information.

Research methods become potentially more morally controversial the further one strays from publicly accessible methods. To use an analogy, looking at what a person is doing in public is (generally) not morally problematic. Peeping into their house from the sidewalk raises some moral concerns and hiding cameras in their bedroom is clearly wrong. As the analogy suggests, the methods become more morally problematic when they involve breaching the wall of privacy. While it might be tempting to regard all such methods as immoral, it will be argued that this is not the case: there are morally acceptable methods that breach the wall. To use an analogy, reporters engaged in legitimate reporting can justly break the walls of privacy in some cases.

In some cases the desired information is not accessible by public means, but is still morally accessible. For example, it would be acceptable to interview private sources who willingly and knowingly talk to the researchers but would be unwilling to be interviewed in public view on the news.

In other cases, the methods used to breach the wall of privacy would often be morally unacceptable. Likely examples include hacking, bribing sources, theft, and gaining information from sources by intimidation or deceit. While these examples provide some limited guidance, what is needed is a more general principle. It is natural enough to seek guidance from the law.

While legality is not the same as morality, the use of illegal methods such as hacking, theft, threat and bribery and so on are clearly morally problematic In many cases of illegal methods, such as theft and hacking, there are independent moral arguments that establish such actions as wrong (over and above their illegality). It is, however, possible for morally acceptable methods of information gathering to be against the law. For example, a repressive state might pass laws severely restricting information gathering by those outside the government. As another example, laws that hide the identity of campaign contributors or that impose draconian non-disclosure agreements on government staffers that go beyond the legitimate requirements of state security). As such, the law is not a perfect guide to morality—but it does provide a useful starting point.

Because so much information is now stored digitally, one method of considerable moral concern is that of hacking (broadly construed). For the sake of simplicity, this can also be taken to include such things as phishing and other such methods that are not, strictly speaking, hacking. As such, this broad method includes the various means of gaining access to digital information without the permission of the owner.

These methods that breach the wall of privacy could be morally justified on utilitarian grounds. To illustrate, if a candidate was a secret pedophile who had child pornography on his laptop, then it could be argued that hacking into his laptop would be morally justified because doing so could help keep a pedophile out of power (and perhaps help put them behind bars).

Another option is to argue that the citizens’ right to know justifies the use of means that would otherwise seem unethical. To use an analogy, a person’s privacy rights do not (in general) permit them to hide their crimes from the police. There can, of course, be clear exceptions in cases involving tyrannical laws or oppressive policing. Likewise, a political candidate (broadly defined) does not have a right to privacy when it comes to their misdeeds that voters have a right to know. For example, it could be argued that opposition researchers would be acting ethically by seizing or stealing state documents from a corrupt politician that prove their corruption.

The obvious counter to such reasoning is that opposition researchers are not law enforcement or even moral enforcement. They are simply members of the public and thus lack any special moral right to use such methods to breach the wall of privacy. If they suspect that something truly bad is occurring, they should refer the matter to the appropriate authorities. The danger of citizens taking such research into their own hands is illustrated by the case of a concerned citizen who decided to investigate rumors that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats were operating a slavery ring in the basement of a pizza shop. During this “investigation” no one was hurt, but the “investigator” fired shots. As such, if something is bad enough to seem to justify using morally problematic methods, then the matter should be referred to the police (assuming they are not corrupt) and, where appropriate, to the press.

At this point the reader might be wondering whether getting information from others who acquired it through questionable means is morally acceptable. This, and other related issues, will be addressed in the next essay on the ethics of sources.

 

 

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The Ethics of Opposition Research I: The Basics

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Opposition research is the gathering of information intended to damage or discredit political adversaries. While the intent to find damaging or discrediting information might seem to be morally problematic, it can also be morally neutral or even morally laudable. If the intent is simply to damage adversaries for political advantage, then this is certainly not laudable—but it need not be morally wrong. After all, the sport of politics is about winning and good might come from using opposition research to damage a bad adversary.

If the intent is to provide citizens with relevant and true information so they can make informed decisions, then this would be morally laudable. After all, true and relevant information would allow for better decision making and this would tend to produce better results than making decisions with false or irrelevant information.

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While the motives of those ordering or conducting the research are certainly relevant to assessing their ethics, their ethics are distinct from the ethics of the research itself and the ethics of its results.  This is because bad people with bad motives might do ethical research (for whatever reason) and end up doing good with their research. For example, a selfish politician who would do anything to satisfy their lust for the power they intend to exploit for personal gain might expose an even worse villain who is running for office. As would be expected, good people with good motives might engage in morally questionable research or end up doing great harm. For example, a researcher who wants the public to be informed might find information that helps defeat a bad candidate but miss the information on the far worse candidate who is elected and does great harm. As a final point about researchers, their ethics are irrelevant to the truth and relevance of the information they gather. To think otherwise, would be to fall into an ad hominem fallacy. In general terms, this is when an irrelevant negative assertion (or assertions) about a source are taken as evidence against their claim(s).  This is distinct from considering the ethics of the researchers when assessing their credibility. After all, bias on the part of researchers reduces their credibility and is thus relevant when considering how confident one can be in the honesty of their claims (which is distinct from their being true) But, I must now set aside the ethics of the researchers and focus on the ethics of the research.

For this essay and those that follow in this series, it will be assumed that there are at least some moral limits to opposition research. Without this assumption, writing about the ethics of opposition would be limited to “anything goes.” One could refute this assumption by employing the approach of the ancient (and current) sophists. The ancient sophists argued in favor of skepticism, relativism and the view that all that matters is success (or winning, if one prefers). On this view, there would be no moral limits on opposition research for two reasons. One is that skepticism and relativism about ethics would entail rejecting a belief in objective ethics. The other is that if success is all that matters, then there are no limits on the means that can be used to achieve that end. What matters, in terms of opposition research, is acquiring (or fabricating) information that can damage a political adversary and thus increase the chances of success.

In terms of arguments in favor of their being moral limits, one excellent place to start is by considering the consequences of having limits versus not having limits. As noted above, good political decisions, such as deciding how to vote, requires that citizens have relevant, true information on which to base their decisions. Opposition research that provides or aims at providing relevant and true (or at least probably true) information would enable citizens to make better decisions and thus produce better results. In contrast, the limitless approach in which all that matters is victory will tend to produce worse results for the general good. There can, of course, be exceptions: a well-informed public might still make terrible choices and an utterly selfish person solely focused on their own power and wealth might end up somehow doing great good. As would be expected, the general debate over whether there should be ethical limits on anything would go gar beyond the possible scope of this short essay.

In the essays that follow, I will also make a case for there being ethical limits on opposition research. The gist of this argument is that if the essays are logically appealing, then that provides a reason to accept that there should be at least some limits on opposition research.  The assessment of the ethics of the research involves considering three key factors: the methods used, the sources and the content. There will, as one might suspect, be an essay on each.

 

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